Homercles

Yep, totally aware that capitalism in a nutshell. And I am absolutely comfortable with companies making money…that’s the whole fucking point. Where I get irate is when a company/industry reaps the benefits of a rising market to the tune of massive profits, but then whine about ‘headwinds’ when it’s proven they were ill-prepared for the inevitable downturn. Oil and gas, banking and aviation are absolutely horrible about that shit. All the while paying ten million to their CEO who is supposed to be guiding the ship long term.

Went to pickup some RR Donuts this morning, dude standing there with his five young kids while wearing an American flag t-shirt with an assault rifle superimposed over it. All I could think of was that video. Like it or not, true or not, all these shootings and ‘come and take it’ fervor are leading me to be very weary around anyone that looks the part. He was too young for the ‘goatee, Oakley’s, balding’ look but give it another decade or so.

For kicks I looked up Chapek’s 2022 compensation on his way out…~$20M total including $6.75M bonus. Nothing’s going to stop this out of control CEO compensation arms race but it still blows my mind how you can ‘fail’ with a bonus 4x your salary yet shutdown a themed hotel for losing money. https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/disney-ceo-bob-chapek-fired-severance-2022-compensation-1235491926/

Shitty that if I ever stayed there I’d probably recognize like 1/3rd of the characters and I’m pretty much caught up on the movies. The Timothy Zahn books were infinitely more interesting extensions of the universe. My perpetual disappointment in Star Wars started when the first Prequel came out with half the movie devoted to complicated trade politics and fucking Jar Jar talking like a hamster getting racked in the nuts…though it did spawn possibly the funniest Robot Chicken of all time:

Myself and a few others are in a wait-and-see mode. My hope is they get the critical mass they’re looking for in the office + attrition for those who steadfastly refuse, and we don’t progress to badged entry reports at a granular level / discipline threats I have one peer that is local, everyone else is scattered. Word around the campfire is the CEO walked around a bit with a long line of folks airing gripes on how poor the infra was…bad keyboards, mice, etc in hotel-land. Dealing with that + traffic to sit next to a dude while we are on the same conf call with Boston/Ireland doesn’t really appeal to me.

You’re making some pretty broad assumptions about one of the most commonly earned graduate degrees out there. Personally I blame senior executives (SVP and up) more than MBAs, with Bain a close second…the shameless pursuit of quarterly profits and associated impact for their shares/bonuses (often 50%+ of annual compensation) leads to serious short sightedness. Granted the last few years have pissed me off in the big tech world. It was plain that Covid was going to spur a spike in client PC/mobile sales, stuff like Zoom and associated cloud infra as things decentralized to a WFH-oriented world. Everyone was high fiving each other. Watching firms go nuts competing for talent, it was obvious there’d be a saturation point…but it didn’t stop massive profit taking across many industries while breathlessly trying to expand. Now there’s endless doom about a recession that hasn’t happened yet, RIFs all over the place and now Phase 2 trying to force more natural contraction via making life harder for employees. We are back to crying about ‘market forces’ when a lot of the FTE expense was unnecessary fluff they themselves created. Airlines are the perfect example…retire old (but still useful) equipment, furlough/retire a slew of pilots, over incentivize customers during a pandemic. Now they’re crying about not having enough metal and people, so tickets are stupid expensive and frequent flyer programs have become almost useless to those of us who don’t spend $20k+ a year traveling in F/J. I’m also convinced a significant portion of inflation was simply firms gouging people while they had excuses. Pile on C-suite compensation that is unbelievably stupidly high…and I’m pretty jaded that they’re all raving to force people back into cubicle farms with zero privacy or facilities for ‘culture’.

Apparently Nick Mohammed was really playing the violin in that scene at his folks house, and the piano accompaniment was played by his wife.

So…left a loaded gun near kids, apparently a round in the chamber with safety off (or a Glock?), randomly in a sofa, walking around shirtless and then seemingly firing it again picking it up? What the FUCK. I only have a couple rifles, shotguns and a Ruger .22 pistol that were handed down to me. They’re in a gun safe, unloaded with the only ammo a box of bird shot, and the key is in a lockbox in my closet…and I’m still wondering if I should even have them. I bet this shit happens all the time but only gets reported when someone dies or calls the cops. Those parents should lose their guns, kids in temporary foster care, and broadcast their faces nightly on the news…but So he gets 10 days jail time and a $150 fine https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2023/04/12/video-shows-child-shooting-gun-found-in-couch-cushion-man-pleads-guilty-to-charges-in-case/ Also says the safety and magazine ordinances are being challenged by multiple lawsuits. Because of course

I read Mazey doesn’t like to jack with Fri/Sat starters on early start weekends.

I bought a refurbished Steelcase Series 2 from Crandalls, and though it looks like a basic chair it is incredibly comfortable with zero signs of wear after two years. Agree with others in paying upfront for a good one and not regretting it.

The same people who are confidently telling everyone to ‘get your ass to the office’ seem to usually be the one’s passing around shitty memes bagging on millennials yet struggle with a Firestick, run to work to hide from their family and take pride in quantifiable but ultimately meaningless metrics like hours worked.

Anyone ever seen Derka and Jason Dick in the same place?

In seriousness…my boss is in Boston, his boss in Ireland. One Director in Chicago, a peer in Idaho, bunch of folks in India/Ireland/etc. My office has been turned into a hotel-cube farm, with zero personal space. There’s no real dining facility. It’s a 30 minute drive for me to get there. Last few times I’ve been in for strategy sessions, half are wearing pajamas with the other half in suits. You can argue I’m a seasoned employee who has met, in person, a lot of the folks I lean on thus no real need to network…but I’ve actually never met my leadership chain in person and just got a stellar performance review. My work speaks for me. Company had a monster couple years in 2021/2022, and WFH was a boon as we recruited talent all over. This all reeks of (for my employer at least) of an attempt to attrit the workforce voluntarily, prop up the value of the commercial RE, and of states taxation pressure. Perhaps, as usual, the answer is companies short sited profit seeking and trying to squeeze blood from a stone. If you don’t deliver quality work and won’t respond to warnings, then you deserve discipline/firing…otherwise, fuck off.

It’s a damn shame hearing about all these large corporations who had abysmal profits the past couple years and associated tanking of their shares once Covid forced most to WFH

Negged

I wish they had Star Wars stun guns, take them down in a non-lethal manner and then proceed to torture these guys live on tv for 3 days until they died of pure pain. They shouldn’t be able to just suicide-by-cop because their life sucks and they want to take out innocent people on the way.

Sounds pretty awesome to me.

I just punched myself in the nuts for ten minutes reading this thread. Holy shit - Sawbonz saying high level studies don’t typically happen on non-patented medication or those with established history, Ana refuses to acknowledge the question or the intent behind it, and goes off on an angry tangent…reminds me of a certain ex president, Covid, abortion, immigration, etc. - Our 9yo had markers of potentially starting puberty early…which can be a massive developmental problem…thankfully not an issue at the moment. You fuck with my ability to treat my child through your dumbass misdirected culture war, I’ll fuck you up. - Inflation is still a thing, food is outrageously expensive, my employer is laying off, hell the first killer app for AI is out there with minimal legislation or governance…and this is the thing our state is spending their time on? Oh and gutting public education, letting an 18yo buy a weapon of war, trying to take away the THC that has been instrumental to my mental health + past alcohol issues, and voting rights, and… - Guy I know who has always been vocally right wing…recently handed divorce papers because he cheated on his ex for years…was trying to convince me that Jan 6 was overblown because “only one person died”. This shit is a sickness, makes me want to puke.

I had to bow out for awhile, got tired of being disappointed and the ORU loss pissed me off…but damn bats came alive against KSU. Run ruled them 12-2 today to take the series. Too bad we were battling from behind for all of game 1 and lost by one run. I’d say I’m hopeful for a late/post season surge…but every other sport this year has been sudden disappointment, so not gonna get all gangsta wild here with optimism

I’m hesitant to post much in this thread, because I have been able to self-moderate after being in the dark for a few years…with the caveat that I remain cognizant of my past and maintain a ‘therefore by the grace of god I go’ vigilance even if the ‘keep going’ voice has pretty much been silenced. But your story roughly aligns with mine. You can PM me for details or just to talk, but after the birth of our second and while I was in grad school, I self-medicated with alcohol as a means to either numb myself from the stress of home life or ‘time travel’ to the next day. It steadily got worse to the tune of lying/hiding it, and the threat of real consequences by my wife with ‘next time you’re spending the night somewhere else’. I suggest you don’t let it get to that point. Three things helped me: 1) I started therapy. I thought I’d go in talking about my drinking, but in reality we covered my anxiety / resentment + had an advocate that helped me understand when my wife was being unreasonable (not with the drinking of course, but expecting everything to go according to her plans in life). He helped me learn my root cause wasn’t alcohol necessarily, but my codep / people-pleaser tendencies. 2) I took a long (7 weeks) break, telling myself and my wife that if I couldn’t handle that or I became a ‘dry drunk’…next step was AA. Full stop. 3) I leaned on this community. Cannot stress how helpful it was to hear from Twice ‘I can’t diagnose, but you don’t necessarily strike me as an alcoholic right now’ + keep reading people’s stories here. Huge shoutout to Twice’s time and patience as I hounded him in PMs. The long break helped me kill my tolerance, and find natural ways to address boredom/stress/anger (like banging my suddenly-happier wife). During that time I was able to really internalize WHY I drank the way I did with my therapist. And having someone who REALLY understood alcoholism (my therapist didn’t drink) was the final leg on that stool…for me. ‘For me’ is the key phrase. I still drink 2-3x a month, but I prefer to have a couple beers over 3ish hours then pop a small THC gummy (wife and I did exactly that last night)…so I may not be the best person to post here or help you, if your struggle is different. I mostly avoid liquor, I always drink a lot of water, try to make sure I eat…because I’ve learned what works for me. Thursday night a close friend went from buzzed to ‘about to throw up in front of a family at The Crossover’. He was so bad I didn’t trust him alone in an Uber. I ended up driving him in his work truck back to central Austin, ubering back to my car in Leander then driving home. It was a late night but I was glad to help a friend and grateful that kinda scene is behind me. Talking with him about it the next day and his current struggles was strangely helpful to me as well, AA sponsor system makes a ton of sense to me. So please pardon the huge novel…but your particular story struck a chord with me, and a few years ago it was helpful to read others stories…so if you made it this far and want a (therefore by the grace of…) moderation success story, PM me.

There’s a great chapter in The Stand that covers the second wave of people dying…those that are immune to Captain Trips but struggle without technology, law and order, etc. One guy electrocutes himself hooking up a generator, another has a gun explode in his face, a dude overdoses on pure smack, etc One chick is legit happy her family is dead, outside her baby brother, all painted as ‘no big loss’ as told from 1st person…no empathy, angry, etc. Well she dies in the second wave by locking herself, with her dead family, in the walk-in by accident. No big loss. That book is longer than a YGIFS essay about brevity, but there are some chapters/storylines that have stuck with me since I first read it in the 90’s.

Not surprised, he has a commanding presence…even way back when those prep school boys used to pee themselves when they say old Bunk coming at em Edit: Speaking of The Wire alum, even if the show was good but uneven, seeing Downtown Clay Davis in Your Honor was a highlight